


Peace and Obscurity

by RosalindInPants



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Fugitives, M/M, This is not a good thing, Wilderness Survival, the party has been split, there will be bad news
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 03:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: What would have happened if, in Paper and Fire, the group succeeded in getting away? If there was no Artifex, no Burners, just a successful Translation away from the Library to safety? Would they all have stayed together? Could Khalila have resisted the urge to go after Dario for long? Would Morgan have trusted the others enough to stay?Let's say the group split up. Let's say they went their separate ways. Now we find Santi, Wolfe, and Thomas trying to build a new life in a remote cabin in the mountains.Heed the tags. There is a death among the main 8 characters.





	Peace and Obscurity

**Author's Note:**

> “There’s a chance that if we hide, we could live our lives in peace and obscurity.” - Wolfe, Ash and Quill.
> 
> "Without Santi, they would not find the strength. Without Jess, no inspiration. Without Thomas, there was no real future. Without Glain, no protection. Without Morgan, no audacity. Without Wolfe, no challenge to do better, be better." - Khalila, Smoke and Iron.

The headline on the newssheet took Santi’s breath away. The illustration beneath it turned his stomach. It took all his years of training to keep his face neutral as he stepped closer to the paper tacked to the shop wall.

_ Rebel Scholar Khalila Seif Executed _

It was hard to tell from the small ink drawing, but he thought she looked proud even tied to the stake with flames around her legs and a jeering crowd in the background. The artist’s creative license or his own wishful thinking, undoubtedly. No one looked proud with their feet in Greek fire.

Santi could still see every soldier he’d lost to that agonizing death on the battlefield. She was just one more lost soldier. Not a gold-band Scholar, not a steel-nerved girl with more courage under fire than some of High Garda officers, not the future Archivist, and certainly not a child he had started to think of as his own. Just a soldier lost in battle. If he thought of it that way, he could keep his composure.

He read the article. There had been a speech, apparently. Her last words. Not reprinted in the newssheet, of course, only described as heresy. All her genius and eloquence, reduced to ashes and lies.

There was no mention of Glain. Santi could only hope that she’d failed to catch up with Khalila and found her way to safety somewhere. Not Wales. The next article down said the High Garda was marching on Wales. Soon, there wouldn’t be any more of Wales.

If she’d been caught with Khalila, she would be dead. Shot on sight by soldiers who knew her only as a traitor, or maybe killed defending the friend she’d given up her chance at safety to track down. If she’d been taken alive…

He couldn’t let himself think about that.

Scanning the rest of the newssheet, he noted a much shorter article near the bottom on the Library’s renewed ties with Spain. No details on what had prompted that particular diplomatic success, but Santi had his suspicions. Dario Santiago was alive and well and very fortunate to be far away. Santi had thoughts on what he might do if he ever encountered the backstabbing little shit again.

Useless thoughts, seeing as Santi would likely never leave this mountain again. Even hiking down to the village to shop was a risk, undertaken only because there were things that even the combined genius of Thomas Schreiber and Christopher Wolfe couldn’t create. Wine, for instance, and flour, and canned vegetables to supplement what they gathered and grew. Medicines and parts for the dozens of projects Wolfe and Thomas were working on.

Santi always went alone. With his beard grown thick and his hair growing long, he wouldn’t look too much like the portraits of himself that the Library circulated, and with his native Italian accent, he fit in better with the locals than Wolfe or Thomas would. No one ever questioned him, but still, he didn’t linger. The villagers thought him eccentric and half-witted for taking up residence in the ramshackle old cabin high on the slope, but the longer he stayed among them, the more likely he was to let something slip. Better to trade his furs and gather what he needed as quickly as he could, load his pack, and be back up the trail before the sun traveled too far across the sky.

It was a long, hard hike up to the cabin, made harder by the carefully concealed traps laid along the trail. The first few were intended to scare rather than to maim, and could have been taken for the work of an overly enthusiastic fur trapper. Further up, closer to the cabin, they turned more dangerous, requiring more of his attention.

But not enough. The image of Khalila still rose in his mind, accompanied by the sound of her screams. He’d failed her. Failed all of them. All he had been able to think about after their escape from Rome had been Christopher, and in his narrow-minded focus, he had missed the signs in both Morgan and Khalila, didn’t realize that first one, then the other, would run.

There had been no news of Morgan and Jess, at least. Privately, Santi suspected both were dead, or at least Jess dead and Morgan quietly dragged back to the Iron Tower, but he let Wolfe and Thomas have their hope. Neither of them needed more dark thoughts than they already had.

When he emerged from the woods into the little clearing on the ledge where the cabin stood, Santi spotted his partner and their sole remaining student together outside, working on the new plumbing system that Thomas had designed. The cabin wasn’t so primitive as to lack indoor plumbing, but the system was so old that it produced only cold water, and the water had to be laboriously pumped up. On bad days, when his shoulders were bothering him, Chris couldn’t pump enough to fill the tub. None of them cared for waiting for the bath to heat once it was filled. Thomas’s designs would give them the hot showers they all sorely missed. Having finished the indoor portion of the project over the past few weeks, they were at last putting in the new well pump.

It looked to be hard work, and both had shed their shirts in the afternoon sun. If there was one good thing to be said for their current exile, it was that it had freed Wolfe of his painful insecurity about his scarred body. In a place where he would only be seen by the two people in the world who best understood his past, he no longer felt compelled to hide himself. For the first time in years, the brown of his chest almost matched the brown of his face, and he had even enjoyed swimming in the little pond they’d found a short hike from the cabin.

They might heal here, all of them, if the Library never found them. In time, they might be forgotten, presumed dead, and the three of them together would be able to hike down to the village, maybe even venture into the larger towns in the valley. Wolfe and Thomas were building another press and debating strategies for distributing printed copies of the books from the Black Archives that currently lined the shelves of their little reading room in the cabin.

It should have been a bedroom, that reading room. A room for Khalila and Glain to share, perhaps, or for one of the couples, depending on how the children preferred to sort themselves out. They could have built walls to divide the bedrooms, built beds enough for all. Finding adequate food for so many might have been a challenge, but Glain and Jess, at least, could shoot well enough to bring down deer, and with Morgan’s power, they could have found forest plants suitable for food and medicine. Khalila could have…

He shook his head. He couldn’t think about that now. Thomas couldn’t know what he’d learned. He didn’t even want to tell Wolfe, but Wolfe could read him too well for there to be any hope of hiding it. The best he could do was wait for a quiet moment after Thomas was asleep and hope Wolfe would be in a calm enough state of mind to hear the news.

He shouted a greeting to his partner and they boy he’d started calling “son”, forced a smile as he waved to them. Both waved back and continued their work while he dropped his pack over by the cabin door. He hadn’t bought anything perishable, this time, so he left it there and went to join them.

The machinery was beyond his comprehension, but there was lifting and digging to help with, and that kept them all busy enough for a while. Santi felt Wolfe’s scrutinizing gaze on him while he worked, and when Thomas’s back was turned, Santi caught his partner’s eye to give a quick shake of his head. Wolfe’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded and turned his attention back to the piece he was adjusting on the pump.

The three of them worked through the rest of the day on the pump, driven on by the promise of hot showers when it was complete. While Thomas and Wolfe made the final adjustments to the more intricate parts of the device, Santi ducked into the cabin to put away his purchases and stir the pot of leftover mountain goat stew on the stove. An extra day of simmering seemed to be making an improvement in the tough meat, and the piece that he tasted was almost good. Not lamb or beef, but acceptable. Or perhaps hunger was distorting his perceptions. It had been a long day, and the sausage he’d eaten for lunch on the way up the trail was long since digested.

Santi took down their bowls and spoons and ladled in a generous portion of stew for each of them. He put the last of yesterday’s loaf of bread on the table, and, after a moment’s thought, added their little pot of butter. Back in Alexandria, he would have put butter on the table without any consideration at all, but here it was a precious resource, limited in quantity until Thomas found more success in his efforts to domesticate the mountain goats. 

Their current herd consisted of a single scrawny female and two orphaned kids, all of them found injured and nursed back to health by Thomas. As the kids grew and drank less milk, there would be more for butter and cheese, but even then, a single goat could only do so much. Just recently, Thomas had caught another healthier goat in hopes of adding it to the herd, but, well, there was a reason they were eating goat stew.

“Ah, our little Sundenbock smells very good today,” Thomas said, walking in the door. Santi found his habit of referring to the creature by its name even after it was butchered somewhat disturbing, but he wouldn’t tell Thomas that. They all had their own ways of compartmentalizing things.

“It still smells like goat to me,” Wolfe said, coming in behind him. “Please tell me you found wine on your excursion, Nic?”

Wine, like butter, was in limited supply here, but Santi could hardly argue with its necessity today, of all days. “I did, and I think we have cause enough to open a bottle today,” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say  _ cause to celebrate _ as he’d meant to.

Missing nothing, Wolfe shot Santi another suspicious glance, but he said no more as he took his seat at the table. Thomas joined him there, Santi opened the wine, and they had what could almost be a celebratory meal, if not for the churning grief that made Santi a little slower to laugh, a little quieter than he usually was. He thought he hid it well, but by the end of dinner, Thomas was watching him warily.

“Are you well, Nic?” Thomas asked while wiping the last of the stew from the bottom of his bowl with a slice of bread.

“Just tired,” he said, managing a yawn. “And disappointed I couldn’t find all the parts you wanted for your windmill.” He hoped the mention of that project would make an adequate distraction.

Thomas nodded. “Yes, that is a too bad, that is true. But it can wait. There is other work to be done. Would you like the first shower, since you are tired?”

“That’s hardly necessary,” Santi replied. “You go ahead. Your work got us showers again; you deserve to be the first to enjoy one.”

“Yes, do go first,” Wolfe agreed. “Nic and I will clean up here. Perhaps we’ll have one together when you’re through.”

Thomas went bright red at that, and hastily stammered out his thanks and hurried to the bathroom.

Santi stood and gathered the dishes while Wolfe sat at the table, nursing his glass of wine. He’d taken to drinking more slowly since they’d turned fugitive, letting every sip of wine linger on his tongue as if memorizing the taste. As if each bottle might be the last they had.

The water started running in the bathroom, and Santi turned on the kitchen tap, and between those and the sound of rattling spoons, he didn’t hear Wolfe come up behind him, but he wasn’t surprised to feel his lover’s arms wrap around him.

“Tell me now,” Wolfe said, just above a whisper in Santi’s ear.

Santi was glad for the dishes. This would be harder with idle hands. “Khalila was captured and executed,” he said simply, keeping his voice low and even. No sense in delaying the blow.

Wolfe’s arms tightened, and his forehead came to rest against Santi’s shoulder blade. “How?”

“The newssheet didn’t say.”  _ Please, God, let Chris leave it at that _ . 

“Liar.” Wolfe’s voice was completely flat, without even a hint of emotion. “This is too big a story for there to be so little detail. Tell me.”

“Chris…” Santi exhaled through his teeth. “You don’t need to hear this.”

“Do you think I won’t spend every spare moment contemplating the possibilities? You do me no good by withholding the truth, my love.”

Santi had no doubt that his partner was capable of dreaming up scenarios far worse than anything described in the newssheet, intimately familiar as he was with the Library’s capacity for cruelty. With his fist clenched around the dishrag, he repeated the content of the article to the best of his ability. He probably missed a few words - he’d never been as good at memorization as a Scholar - but the salient details were burned into his mind.

Wolfe remained still at his back through the whole of it, breathing so evenly it had to be by conscious control. “Thank you,” he said at the end of it, letting a note of grief creep into his words. “The poor child. She deserved that least of all of us. Was there word of any of the others?”

“Nothing,” Santi replied. “But apparently, the Library and Spain are on good terms now.”

That got a bitter laugh. “Naturally. I suppose that answers the question of where  _ he _ went.” He sighed and pressed his head harder against Santi’s back. “I ought to be glad one of them is safe, at least.”

“I can’t say I’m inclined to forgive him myself. Certainly not today.” Finished with the dishes, Santi drained the basin and dried his hands before turning to wrap his partner in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered against Wolfe’s graying hair. “If I’d only been watching them all better…”

“Hush, Nic, don’t take the world on your shoulders,” Wolfe said, and for a while they stood in silent grief together, drawing such comfort as they could from each other.

The water went quiet in the bathroom, and Wolfe drew away from Santi, reaching around him for a dishcloth. “I’ll get the counter. You get the table?”

Thomas still hadn’t emerged by the time they finished with the kitchen, even the unpleasant task of scraping out the last of the stew from the pot and scrubbing the pot clean. The small amount of remaining stew would keep in the cellar overnight to be breakfast for one of them.

Putting the broom he’d used to sweep the floor back in its place, Wolfe cast a worried look toward the bathroom. “I’m going to check on him. Give me a few minutes.”

That left Santi with nothing to do. He checked over the inventory of canned and preserved food in the cabinets, listening to the soft sound of Wolfe’s voice from the bathroom. If Thomas was responding, it was too softly to hear. Not a good sign.

Santi never quite knew how to approach Thomas when he was in a fragile state. Didn’t quite know how to approach Wolfe sometimes, for that matter. Being startled was bad for both of them, but when they were lost in the past, the sound of footsteps could inspire panic as they imagined a torturer coming for them. Santi settled for walking slowly but not silently, and stopped at the half-open bathroom door to take a cautious look inside.

Thomas was huddled against the side of the tub, shaking, a towel around his waist. Wolfe crouched beside him, speaking in a low, soothing voice while he rubbed the boy’s scarred back. “Yes, keep breathing. Well done. We are here. You are safe here. Keep breathing.”

Santi nudged the door open wider so he could step through.

Wolfe’s head snapped up at the creak of the hinges. “Nic. Perimeter check. Now.”

A fit of paranoia, then. This, at least, was something he could help with. Santi drew the gun he always carried, checked that the safety was on, and held it at his side. “Do you want to come along?”

Thomas started to look up, then cringed away toward the tub. “I have no clothes.  _ Mein Gott _ , they will arrest me when I have no clothes.” His voice quavered as he spoke, breaking into sobs on the last words.

Wolfe kept rubbing his back. “Shh. Be calm. Breathe. Nic will protect us. Look, he has his gun ready. See?” With a gentle hand on Thomas’s cheek, he turned the young man’s face until he could see Santi standing in the doorway, gun held low and ready in both hands.

It took him a moment to process the sight, and he blinked a few times before saying. “Yes. I see. Thank you, Captain Santi.” For all that they’d encouraged him to use their given names, Thomas still reverted to formality under stress.

Santi bowed the way he used to when addressing Scholars under his protection. “I am at your service Scholars Wolfe, Schreiber. I will patrol the perimeter and report any suspicious activity.” He always felt like a caricature of a soldier when he did this, but it seemed to soothe Thomas, and that was what mattered. Executing a sharp turn, he left the bathroom, setting off on his usual route around the cabin.

Behind him, he could hear Wolfe saying, “Come, let’s get you to your room. You can get dressed. Clothes will help.”

There was no genuine need for this patrol, but Santi still conducted it professionally. Interior first, then exterior, then interior again. Search for signs of movement or enemy combatants. Verify that all shutters and doors were secure. Check each room, including closets large enough for a man to hide in.

The only movement he saw was a fox slinking around the clearing. Santi left it alone. Maybe it would find its way into one of the traps, and Santi would have a nice fox pelt to sell on his next trip to the village.

Back in the cabin, he ended his second interior patrol in Thomas’s bedroom, where Thomas, now dressed in his nightclothes, sat on the edge of the bed. Standing in front of him, Wolfe clasped his hands, looking into the large boy’s face with paternal tenderness. They spoke in low tones in German.

Santi put his gun away, stood at attention, and said, “Scholar Wolfe, Scholar Schreiber, the perimeter is secure. I await further orders.”

Both of them looked over at him, and he was relieved to see Thomas’s eyes focus immediately on him. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Truly.”

Wolfe rolled his eyes. “At ease, Nic. You can go ahead and shower. Thomas and I just have a few things to talk about.”

So this would be one of those nights when Thomas couldn’t fall asleep without Wolfe sitting at his bedside. “Right. Good night, son. You’ll shower last, Chris?”

“If you’ve left me any hot water,” Wolfe said with a hint of a smile.

The smile was a good sign, Santi told himself as he left Thomas’s room, the sound of conversation in German resuming behind him. If Wolfe could smile, things weren’t so bad with Thomas. And if things weren’t so bad with Thomas, Santi might see his lover again before morning.

Usually, Santi didn’t resent Thomas’s need for Wolfe so much. It did Wolfe a lot of good to care for Thomas, and even with the occasional night apart when Thomas couldn’t sleep, the two of them still had far more time together than they’d had at many points in their careers.

Tonight, though, Santi didn’t want to be alone. Not with the news and the guilt heavy on his shoulders.

But he could endure it. He was a soldier. Had been a soldier. It was still hard to remember he’d never be one again. He’d burned that bridge when he betrayed his own company. Even if by some miracle the Archivist dropped dead and his replacement pardoned them all, Santi would never be able to go back.

As if he would trust any pardon offered, anyway.

He took his time getting ready for the shower. He cleaned his gun first, though it hardly needed it, and sharpened his combat knife. Cleaned and polished his boots, then Wolfe’s and Thomas’s. He turned down the neatly made bed and laid out nightwear for himself and Wolfe. Pants only for himself; he would sleep nude if not for the fact that Thomas occasionally came to their room after nightmares. It had only taken one night of calming Thomas down from both the fright of his nightmare and the embarrassment of seeing Santi’s bare ass to convince him that sleeping clothed was the better option. Pants and a shirt for Wolfe; he could decide for himself if he wanted to wear the shirt.

When there was nothing left to do, he went into the bathroom and started the shower. It took the hot water a moment to come up, but soon steam billowed up from the tub, and Santi stepped under the water.

Holy mother of God, he’d missed showers. They’d made the showerhead wide, and water pounded down from it in a glorious, burning rain across the whole of his back, drowning out his troubled thoughts. Santi prided himself in his ability to wash quickly. He made no use of that ability now.

He was just rinsing his hair when the bathroom door opened and Wolfe came in, shedding his clothes with all possible haste to step into the shower and push Santi against the wall. Wolfe didn’t say a word, but his breath was as hot as the water against Santi’s neck, and his body made its needs plain as it ground into Santi’s.

With a low moan, he wrapped his arms around his lover and held him while their bodies slid together, slick and wet, hope and grief colliding. Lips came together. Hips aligned. Fingers twined in hair. They found their rhythm, their union, their spark of life in the face of death, and they let it carry them away.

A shock of cold water stirred them from their panting repose against the shower wall, bringing with it a burst of laughter from them both. They hastened to scrub each other clean, and then ran, towel-wrapped and shivering, to dive into their bed and beneath the blankets unclothed. There they lay huddled in each other’s arms until the chill passed.

Until the silence grew heavy.

Though it was hard to tell by the flickering light of the oil lamp, Santi thought he saw shadows in his lover’s eyes. He knew he felt those shadows in his own heart.

Wolfe brought his hand to Santi’s cheek to run gentle fingers through his beard. “It wasn’t your fault, my love. Grieve her loss with me, but please, don’t take it on yourself.”

Santi closed his eyes, letting out a long breath. “That isn’t true, and you know it. If I had been watching her, if I had thought…”

“What? You would have stopped Khalila Seif from doing what she was determined to do?” Wolfe kissed him, softly, on the cheek. “There is no one in the world who could have accomplished that.”

The laugh that welled up in his chest was a bitter thing, half a sob, but it took some of the guilt with it when it escaped him. “No, I suppose there isn’t. Remember that time in the Welsh camp?”

“Ah, yes, have you ever seen recitation of history used to such effect?” Wolfe replied in a voice laden with equal parts fondness and sorrow.

One memory led to another, and when there were no more stories to tell, they held each other through the grief until sleep found them. 

In the morning, they would continue the work of survival.


End file.
